5by5 - The Big Web Show #77: Sarah Parmenter
Tagged with “ux”
(4)
-
5by5 | The Big Web Show #77: Sarah Parmenter
-
Your Library Website Stink and it’s Your Fault by Matthew Reidsma
Your library website is frustrating your users and sending them into the warm embrace of Google. Why? Because it’s not made for them, it’s made for librarians. As librarians, instead of adapting our websites to meet evolving user needs, we’ve dug in our heels and spent our energy making arguments about how much better our resources are than Google’s. And now our websites stink, and it’s our fault.
But all is not doom and gloom! I talk about how libraries can turn things around and build useful, usable websites that can adapt to user needs by learning to listen to your users, knowing what your website is for, and getting and using feedback.
-
5by5 | The Big Web Show #53: Raising Rates
5by5 - The Big Web Show #53: Raising Rates
-
Christian Crumlish: Designing Social Interfaces: 5 Principles, 5 Practices, 5 Anti-Patterns
As we use social tools on the web, design patterns are emerging. Social design must be organic, not static, emotional, not data-driven. A social experience builds on relationships, not transactions.
In 2008, Yahoo!’s Christian Crumlish introduced the idea of social design patterns to BayCHI. He returns in 2010 to share what he learned over two years. With his Yahoo! colleague Erin Malone, Christian created a wiki to gather social design patterns and published a snapshot of the wiki in book form.
Among the many principles of social design, Christian presents five:
- Pave the Cowpaths: Watch what people do, then support and adapt to that behavior.
- Talk Like a Person: Use a conversational voice. Be self-deprecating when an error occurs. Ask questions.
- Be Open: Embrace open standards. Support two-way exchange of data with other applications.
- Learn from Games: Give your application fun elements, like collecting and customization.
- Respect the Ethical Dimension: Understand the expectations people have in social situations and abide by them.
Christian then describes five practices:
- Give people a way to be identified and to characterize themselves.
- Create social objects that give people context for interaction.
- Give people something to do, and understand the continuum of participation, from lurkers to creators to leaders.
- Enable a bridge to real life.
- Let the community elevate people and the content they value.
Finally, he discusses five anti-patterns, commonly-used design choices that appear to solve a problem but that can backfire and pollute of the commons. Examples:
- The Cargo Cult: Copying successful designs without understanding why they are successful.
- Breaking Email: Sending an email alert, but rejecting or silently discarding the reply.
- The Password Anti-Pattern: Asking people for their password to another service encourages poor on-line hygiene.
- The Ex-Boyfriend Bug: Connecting people who share a social circle but who have reasons to avoid each other.
- The Potemkin Village: Building groups with no members. Instead, let people gather naturally.
Christian stresses that social design is an ecosystem in which designers must balance many trade-offs. Not every design pattern applies to every application, but good designers can use patterns to strike a balance that works.